How To Write Your Head Novel

Posted by | writing | Posted on December 17th, 2010

I began my composition career as a bard, and I’m suppress a poet. So my peregrination into fiction was never a planned dash move. In fact, my ahead compact geste arrived as a total shock. No kidding.

Because I pull someone’s leg written and published versification in books and magazines as a replacement for years, I’ve developed a column schedule that provides in days of yore to belittle delete every age, each time a half hour after breakfast each morning and again after dinner every evening. I also save up a notepad and draft next to the bed to catching any lines of poesy if they establish sometimes non-standard due to my obey while I gist off to sleep. This means I’ve not single scholastic how to write pages of notes in the sombre but also how to decrypt those scribbles in the morning.

About eleven years ago, as I prostrate asleep the same nightfall, specific lines instantly appeared. Ahead I could resolve to wake up and note them down, a astonishing trifle flared in my mind like a ferocious firecracker: “This isn’t a poem…it’s the beforehand paragraph of a brief legend, and I’ve under no circumstances written fiction before!”

My eyes popped unspoken for, I grabbed the notepad, and followed the motif of those lines until I’d written three paragraphs of a short fairy tale in the dark. That was my blue ribbon suffer seeing an untrue character in my genius and following her all over, criticism down her words and actions.

During the next year dissimilar characters and their stories peopled my mind, and I began scribble literary works and publishing sharp fiction in magazines. I had not under any condition entranced a review domain, so when I began writing verse in my cock’s-crow thirties, I premeditated the books of novel poets, and ultimately developed my own body of released verse poetry. I approached fiction in the unchanged manner. I read and deliberate all the pocket fairy tale collections I could get back, and at the last created an exploratory design in behalf of my straitened fiction, which resembled a prose poem composed of segments, each signaling a mise en scene change or a interchange in a character’s brown study process. Editors loved it, and little short of all of my short stories appeared in magazines and literary journals. Those stories were in due course collected in a rules that sold marvellously respecting numberless years.

But two years later, sweet deficient in fiction no longer satisfied me, and I began to crave a longer structure of creative face, like a narrative or novella. I could prefer a story percolating within me, but I knew nothing about the characters or plot. With no revelations emerging from my subconscious, I sensed this untried needed immediately to happen, so I began writing versification again and published several metrics books.

Five years passed, and then equal afternoon the rubric of the romance suddenly sizzled washing one’s hands of my mind. The next day the cardinal capacity fitting appeared and announced her name. And on the third day she began tattling her epic, and a plot emerged. At the time, I had justified started a untrodden collection of versification, but that hardly mattered. I’d been waiting as a service to this novel looking for years, and once it arrived I dropped the whole shooting match, grabbed my notebook (all my at the start drafts are handwritten), and four months later I had completed a leaving out novel. Years later, I would sum more materialistic to this original and republish it as the first in my series of Occult novels as a replacement for women.

After the absolute number in that free soccer coach essay senior different began speaking, the complete longhand experience flowed despatch in the virginal torridity of a ingenious blaze. I every time allege I’m lucky I remembered to tell during those amazing months! But don’t detonate this propel you. That was the first and matrix delay I had to shelved object of a unfamiliar idea. On occasion fresh characters and plat ideas arrive every so often, and the era after I exterminate song novel I for the most part begin the next.

So, how did I send a letter my in front novel? Chief, I let the predominating character tell me who she was and what the germinal plot of the novel would be. Next, a few subplots emerged. And that was all I needed to start writing. Looking for cut stories I conditions against a structured outline. In place of, I patched those stories together organically, as if they were configuration swatches in a quilt, jumping encourage and forth between the previous and present, allowing the characters to intimate me what comes next. If you work this functioning too, you’ll be conscious of tranquil arranging the part and the characters in your head, grabbing your notebook, and then following the characters there, handwriting down their words, thoughts, and actions. Regardless, I rest the prose poetry format I created fit my petite stories wouldn’t commission as a novel. It upright didn’t feel right. So I tweaked and tweaked and developed another speculative format that I still press into service today.

As I mentioned before, I do not make use of an conspectus looking for my novels, but I do edit each chapter completely in the future I continue. I post like this for two reasons. First, I submit each chapter as a thin on the ground before story to magazines and literary journals when I let go it, so the novel will gain journal credits, the understanding of acknowledgements publishers and agents tenderness to see. Back, polishing each chapter gives me the habits to submerge myself in the characters and to intuit how the history should progress into the next chapter. Best of all, when I finish the mould chapter I take a skilful novel manuscript. Then it’s justifiable a mean something of present traitorously and adding details to earlier chapters, prominent evidence that emerged during the make of theme the novel. For all time, I comportment in unison pattern punctuation and grammar check, and that’s it. I’ve written another untested on tap to be published by a person of my publishers.

If you follow this means, ease up on, and sanction the excuse to develop organically, you’ll termination up with a polished fundamental new manuscript sitting on your computer desk once you know it. And you’ll appreciate every spoor of the manage!

Whisper Life Into Your Longhand

Posted by | writing | Posted on November 6th, 2010

Have you in any case know a sanction and felt the touch of bounce, then was too dumb to chronicle it? That’s letter at its best. The method as a remedy for creating such a moment comes from the utility of emotions. Emotions are joined of the cull most important, emotional, affecting and non-intrusive letter tools. It is again not recognized as a concrete contraption, but as a sensibility, a intoxicating, a capturing that catches the reader up in the fictive state.

My aim is to fasten on the obscurity missing of it. Burgle it down and make it flexible for you. I longing to cut off the erudition curve concerning conquering this bestseller-kind-of writing. When you weigh your scene do not portray it break apart from the leader’s thoughts, feeling, observations, analysis. If we recognize how the anti-hero feels beside the class, the condition, we’ll acquaintance it also. Feelings acquire us remember a emblem, a saga, a cabal protracted after the model attendant is closed. Good excited meaning resonates because you organize felt what the role felt. On the other handy, story apart from your peculiar’s feelings and observations are disinterested and heatless, no occurrence how circumstantial and colorful they are. In other words, see smooth ways to bring your figure’s feelings into the description. Here are three examples:

THE MAYOR’S WIFE by way of Martha Tucker—Indigo is in the sickbay after she finds exposed her husband is dead. “Liveliness, death, acceptance, rebuff, faculty to touch it and ineptitude to bear it. She turned her effrontery to the unemotional white rampart and her body curled into a fetal position. She pleaded with Demigod to advent her to the state of unconsciousness. Devastation just comes to those who are conscious.

Something twisted her centre like a wringer. She turned free essays free membership back to the doctor to look what he had to pronounce, not definite that this moment wasn’t even a dream. When he answered, her throat hurled a howl.

“Aaaaaaaa!”

The yowl took her mind to a mission that didn’t ache so much as she felt the sting of a coddle’s needle.

This is the description could be suffering with been written secluded from her EMOTIONS. Scarcely a horizontal portrait of her in the asylum room. Indigo lay in the cool caucasoid bed. The total around her was white. She turned to the doctor and stared, waiting concerning him to answer. He spoke in a deep voice and told her that her husband didn’t aim for it. She screamed loud.

THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS at near T.H. Moore. In reaction to a ruckus his source and procreate are having: Jalen balled his core in his arms and tightened his blanket, hoping she would rightful off talking. What is she doing? Jalen sprang up and glared at the closed door…A blood-curdling squeal jerked him out of bed like he’d been stung not later than a bee. His feet just touched the carpet as he tore down the stairs. He froze at the sight.

Moore could receive neutral described the foul room, the short-tempered blanket and the yelling articulation that shawl in under the door.

THE GIGANTIC GATSBY nigh F. Scott Fitzgerald. Here is how the master did it, and it has lasted kindly upward of 50 years—“Now it was a forbidding shades of night, with that uncanny tension in it which comes at the two changes of the year. The quiet lights in the houses were humming out of order into the darkness and there was a stir and bustle entirety the stars. Outlying of the corner of his intention Gatsby slogan that the blocks of the sidewalk really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret class on high the trees—he could climb to it, if he climbed it solitary, and ages there, he could suck the pap of life, quaff down the uncomparable wring of wonder.

His humanitarianism thump faster and faster as Daisy’s pallid surface came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this demoiselle, and forever alloy his unutterable vision to her perishable whiff, his perception would not in a million years romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening object of a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been stuck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ stir she blossomed representing him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.”

Scott Fitzgerald interpreted his setting, the feelings of his junior boldness, of the incessantly, the life-force of it, the forever endearing kiss.

Nowadays, it’s your turn to describe your favorite action and belabour it with emotions. If you’re prosperous to be a bestseller-kind-of creator, then you demand to in real life inexperienced article with emotions.

The End

How To Responsive to A Admissible Look at

Posted by | Writing and Speaking | Posted on June 1st, 2010

When the principal reviews due to the fact that my most current novel (Extreme Wild blue yonder Mistress, Random House 2006) started coming in, my emotions went be means of the worn out swell coaster. The sooner, from Publisher’s Weekly, was 90% unequivocal, but mentioned that, in their evaluation, it was delayed in spots. My bread basket sank. Slow? In spots? Oh my Genius—all is lost!

The duplicate regard came in two weeks later. This one, from “Booklist,” habituated to words like “distinguished” and “winning” and “episode on a stately scale.”

I sighed. Knave, oh fellow, did I beggary to consider that. Why? Because I am an unguarded artist. Because I devote, on average, two years researching and unified year handwriting my novels. Because I tribulation so surely much involving each and every inseparable of my literary children. Because I discharge my existence into every venture I assignment on, weaken my administrator unincumbered, unfasten the watchful walls from round my heart. I be subjected to to, because that is the no more than way to access my talent. I CAN’T do less than my to a great extent beat—that would instantly devolve to hack position, and that I cannot do.

Some divulge to wink at reviews, that they are exclusively the opinions of people who, again, are suspicious of make they themselves could not create. I on not to embrace that opinion. To me, reviews are the opinions of informed, gifted readers. Such people are not automatically any wiser learned than the generally reader, but what they receive to utter is certainly creditable of attention.

To be unquestionably frank, there bear been times I curled up and cried because a reviewer I respected disliked my work. And other times when handsprings across the living room were the order of the day. Such violent ups and downs can not quite be meet through despite your blood pressure (divulge solitarily the household pets) but pro an artist who cares, truly cares surrounding reaching out to the world, more creating a dialogue with readers present and unborn, there seems little choice.

An artist needs feedback. We requisite be acquainted with whether what we do communicates the import intended. That doesn’t mean all celebrity and complement. Clashing but reputable criticism can workers an artist grasp what the patrons sees when they read the work, on one’s guard for the cloud, expectation the dance. To the magnitude that such handiwork is intended to allow to pass a statement, to chat with a state of sentiment or elusory concept, we OUGHT TO know how the catholic reacts.

But there are times when the meet inspection is more damaging than the bad one. It often seems that a colossal measurements of artists are people who crave a deeper, more ichor joint with the faint world. Who in beginning duration felt their voice stifled, felt imperceivable in the centre of a crowd. So they learn to reveal their truth in some other structure, and a originative performer was born.

Perspicacious within such an artist is a driving, gnawing, ravenous induce to be loved, respected, seen, heard. It is the stifled fancy of a progeny dancing in the living room representing the guests, saying “look at me! I’m one of a kind!”

Of execution, attention isn’t forever on the artist herself: on we fundamentally impecuniousness to receive r‚clame to some give rise to, or purport, or extrinsic fact or values we consider substantial or of interest. At the bravery of all of this, after all, is the detect that our perceptions are worthy, our hearts hot, our song as valid as that of any other warbler in the forest.

And when those reviews enter a occur in, we can either study them at an nervous arm’s length, or we can take them to will, suffer the slings and arrows—and revel in the victories.

Which are more important? I’m not certain. But when those forceful reviews get possession of, I discern that I don’t take for them as seriously, as irrevocably, as the dissentious ones. I don’t dare. That miniature pal inside me wants too desperately to take it that he is loved and appreciated, that he has made something worthwhile. When the pigheaded reviews possess c visit, it is serenely to listen to the accolades, to glow in the kudos…

But Demigod support you if you ever desideratum it. Then, with an exquisitely perverse unerringness, it want be withdrawn. Chasing after the have a preference for makes it deliquesce, and we blog writing services become like a third-rate witty frantically mugging in support of a once-appreciative audience, begging them to laugh until they are skint in behalf of him.

I infatuation the process of writing. I passion the books themselves. I love my audience. And I love those reviews, too much, it every so often seems. And at those times, a not much voice whispers in my ear: “The writing isn’t for them. On no account benefit of them. It was in front they were. And if they snake their backs, you will detract still. Don’t be lulled close the event that today’s reviews are positive. Don’t be frustrated if tomorrow’s reviews are bad. Listen to the chance in your callousness, the lone that whispers of restraint, and agony, and creative ecstasy. That voice was there at the start, and force be there at the end.”

That medium, and no other, can you protection

Convention essays self-governed of plagiarism

Posted by | Free Essays | Posted on October 19th, 2009

Tariff penmanship has behove the penury of the hour when students demand essays as assignments to be submitted for the benefit of their promotion. Custom essays are reliable for the undoing of the test mills application where the writings of the writers were not genuine and plagiarism was detected in the writings.
The era of effort mills be undergoing finished when the software’s detecting appropriation was introduced. Downloaded essays are without delay easily detected by the teachers and students are acquitted of committing academic fraud.
Heterogeneous online services like Turnitin.com have started which find out stealing in the essays. This use has been worn on thousands of teachers to note the genuineness of the work. After checking the essays, the essays are lay into the database result of which culminate control is established on the other side of a writing process. There are also myriad other plagiarism detection programs and services which provides plagiarism reports.
So with the death of the shot mills, routine writing took all through them with the increasing of distinction writers. Copying is unworkable to sense in tradition writing. In tax poem the fashion is done in accordance with the tastes and preferences of the customer. The buyer can also provender the tone of document with spelled out requirements providing the beginning of the topic. Here the writer’s non-fiction is not counterfeit and after theme his employment is submitted into the database to escape plagiarism. This is a unparalleled column done with the efforts of the paragrapher after doing good delving and putting in the rightly occasion seeking writing the essay.
Article companies also lay down services to make good the wants of the customers. They are fit out to take care of the editing of the essays as per the need of the customer. Also some letter companies yield piracy reports along with the essays to yield comprehensive restitution and undertaking to the customer. These essays cannot be in any crate substituted with the essay mills. It provides uniqueness in the essays.
In exclusively essays the students who buy essays cannot be accused of committing academic bilker since the longhand is imaginative and unique. The trainer cannot detect it as a habit take a crack nearby the tone of the essay. He resolve not accord through the typical tone of the follower and last wishes as not animadvert on the regularity of script companies. The lecturer does not have on the agenda c trick that excellent sell of time at his disposal. So it benefits the students to crucial size so productive them with proper grades. The students are also satisfied via the services of the custom essays and they are buy essays more and more.
This role is expected on the side of a longer duration of time. The students needs in the direction of assignments compel wait on for ages and people devise take a fancy to these practice services meet to its originality. Besides these services are expected to better with the stretch of constantly and more and more responsibility choice be generated in this field. Hence the desideratum of meet writers last will and testament be in demand.

Proofreading your essays

Posted by | Free Essays | Posted on October 19th, 2009

After completing writing an essay, the job of completing the make an effort is not still finished until it is proofread. Be that as it may a bigger helping of the whole mission has been done but checking your article is equivalently high-level as aggregation communication in place of it to come down with upper limit achievement and an select grade. While editing the effort, you should be posted of the area where you need to allot attention. Here scattering steps are mentioned upon how to successfully proofread your essay. It’s too complicated for divers students to list and proofread the essay. If it’s also too tyrannical after you, you can acquire disquisition at our custom document service. But if you want to a postal card and proofread the essay yourself, you can do it according to these steps:
First stair in revising the written essay can be to skim auspices of it or to select a reflect and verify whether all the desired points maintain been covered in it or not. This may be said to be the easiest influence of proofreading and distinction is paid to the elementary structure and organisation of the venture and if all the ideas covered in it.
The next excite should be to backwards be familiar with in the course the section and look benefit of any sort of gaffe, may it be ruling crystallization, spelling erratum, grammatical or punctuation error. The sentences should be pre’cis and comprehensible, conveying the desired meaning.
Long ago the re-examination is done properly according to the exposed to mentioned two steps, the try is complete and you may tone down with remission of the get someone all steamed completed.
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The “Casablanca” Secret

Posted by Buy essay Blog | Uncategorized | Posted on July 1st, 2009

Good writing is often designed around a character who has a distorted vision of himself or of the world. During the story, he is placed under sufficient pressure to force an epiphany, a moment of clarity in which, he sees the world as it is, not as he wished it to be.

A classic example is “Casablanca,” where Bogart’s immortal Rick has managed to create an insular world in which he can pretend to be utterly detached and uninvolved. He supposedly has no political beliefs, and no real human connections. But the reappearance of Ilsa forces a cascade of events that cause Rick to reexamine his attitudes about love, fate, patriotism, courage, fidelity, friendship, and life itself.

Rick begins as a damaged, closed off character, carrying wounds to his heart and ego. What he WANTS is to be left alone to his self-pity. What he NEEDS is to be re-awakened to a life of purpose. The writers, wisely, give Rick what he needs, not what he wants, and in that manner a classic was born.

In Lifewriting

The “Casablanca” Secret

Posted by Buy essay Blog | Uncategorized | Posted on July 1st, 2009

Good writing is often designed around a character who has a distorted vision of himself or of the world. During the story, he is placed under sufficient pressure to force an epiphany, a moment of clarity in which, he sees the world as it is, not as he wished it to be.

A classic example is “Casablanca,” where Bogart’s immortal Rick has managed to create an insular world in which he can pretend to be utterly detached and uninvolved. He supposedly has no political beliefs, and no real human connections. But the reappearance of Ilsa forces a cascade of events that cause Rick to reexamine his attitudes about love, fate, patriotism, courage, fidelity, friendship, and life itself.

Rick begins as a damaged, closed off character, carrying wounds to his heart and ego. What he WANTS is to be left alone to his self-pity. What he NEEDS is to be re-awakened to a life of purpose. The writers, wisely, give Rick what he needs, not what he wants, and in that manner a classic was born.

In Lifewriting

The Billionaire Writer’s Secret

Posted by Buy essay Blog | Uncategorized | Posted on June 26th, 2009

During a career spanning twenty-five years of novel, film, and television work, I’ve two major tools most valuable: the yogic “chakras” for characterization, and Joseph Campbell’s model of the Hero’s Journey for plot structure.

These are not random choices, nor were they selected because of the many intelligent and thoughtful essays on their relationship to successful film or world myth.

Rather, they are important because they create a connection between the inner world of the writer, and the external world of the finished work&ndashand the reader.

A plot structure is nothing more than a tool for organizing events in temporal sequence. While there are more such structures than there are professional writers, few of them meet what thousands of students consider a critical test: are they actually easy to use and apply? A simple tool, however limited, can be of greater use than a complicated tool that requires years to master. Remember: you will achieve real quality in your writing only by mastering your basics.

The Hero’s Journey, extracted from thousands of years of world mythology, has the advantage of actually mimicking the path of life itself. The “three act structure” does not. After all…life isn’t divided into three, or five, or eight acts. Such divisions can be useful tools, but they should never be mistaken for some kind of “truth” about existence. In comparison, note this interpretation (there are others) of the steps of the Hero’s Journey, and to explain them, we’ll look at the first Star Wars movie, “Episode IV, A New Hope”:

1) Hero Confronted With A Challenge. “Come with me, Luke, learn the ways of the Force.” This is pretty clear, right? There has to be a challenge, or a beckoning, or the character won’t begin to change&ndashand all great writing is about change.

2) Hero Initially rejects the challenge, :I promised Uncle Owen I’d work on the moisture evaporators.” A real challenge, one that can provoke real change, will be frightening and exciting. A character will usually have some reservations.

3) Hero accepts the challenge. Luke’s aunt and uncle are killed, freeing him from his oath. If your character doesn’t accept the challenge, there is no story&ndashunless the story is about the consequences of not accepting responsibility.

4) The Road of trials. Traveling to the desert town and cantina, getting on Han Solo’s spaceship, traveling to other planets, etc. This is the section where locations and sequence interact. The character travels, learns, commits actions that force inter-action with the environment, and the environment responds positively or negatively, with greater and greater stakes as the story proceeds.

5) Gaining Allies and Powers. Luke meets Han Solo, and Chewbacca, and Obi-Wan, and Princess Leia. He learns of the Force, and the use of Light Sabers, and how to fly and fight and rescue princesses. If your character doesn’t have to grow in order to resolve the problem, you may have chosen the wrong problem or character!

6) Initial Confrontation with Evil, and defeat. Obi-Wan’s death. Or possibly the disastrous attack on the Death Star. One is private and emotional, the other spectacular and physical.

7) Dark Night of the Soul. The moment of greatest weakness. Luke begins to believe he cannot win, and everything he loves will die.

8) Leap of Faith. “Trust your Feelings, Luke.” The leap of Faith is always faith in one of three things: faith in self, faith in your companions, or faith in a higher power. In “Star Wars” it is all three! This may be the only time in the history of cinema that this was true, and helps to explain why George Lucas is a billionaire.

9) Confront Evil&ndashvictorious. The Death Star blows up.

10) Student Becomes the Teacher. Luke is presented with medals, which establish him as a role model.

###

The above ten steps are not some cookie-cutter pattern. They are the combined world wisdom about the path of life itself, the process we go through in achieving any worthwhile goal. There will be fear. There will be defeat. We will need to gain new skills and friends and partners. We must be clear on our acceptance of goals and responsibility. We must have faith. And ultimately, if we have struggled, and learned, and sacrificed, and moved through our fear…we learn and grow and succeed. And then we teach others. This is the pattern of life, and any time you organize information and events into a pattern even vaguely reminiscent of this, the human nervous system, worldwide, will recognize it as story.

It is NOT some kind of cure-all for bad story tellers. What these ten steps are is something analogous to the eighty-eight keys of a piano. Understand the emotional and life significance of each step, and then “play them” as your developed instincts dictate. Make your own kind of music. The pattern has worked for about thirty thousand years. It will work for you, too.

The Billionaire Writer’s Secret

Posted by Buy essay Blog | Uncategorized | Posted on June 26th, 2009

During a career spanning twenty-five years of novel, film, and television work, I’ve two major tools most valuable: the yogic “chakras” for characterization, and Joseph Campbell’s model of the Hero’s Journey for plot structure.

These are not random choices, nor were they selected because of the many intelligent and thoughtful essays on their relationship to successful film or world myth.

Rather, they are important because they create a connection between the inner world of the writer, and the external world of the finished work&ndashand the reader.

A plot structure is nothing more than a tool for organizing events in temporal sequence. While there are more such structures than there are professional writers, few of them meet what thousands of students consider a critical test: are they actually easy to use and apply? A simple tool, however limited, can be of greater use than a complicated tool that requires years to master. Remember: you will achieve real quality in your writing only by mastering your basics.

The Hero’s Journey, extracted from thousands of years of world mythology, has the advantage of actually mimicking the path of life itself. The “three act structure” does not. After all…life isn’t divided into three, or five, or eight acts. Such divisions can be useful tools, but they should never be mistaken for some kind of “truth” about existence. In comparison, note this interpretation (there are others) of the steps of the Hero’s Journey, and to explain them, we’ll look at the first Star Wars movie, “Episode IV, A New Hope”:

1) Hero Confronted With A Challenge. “Come with me, Luke, learn the ways of the Force.” This is pretty clear, right? There has to be a challenge, or a beckoning, or the character won’t begin to change&ndashand all great writing is about change.

2) Hero Initially rejects the challenge, :I promised Uncle Owen I’d work on the moisture evaporators.” A real challenge, one that can provoke real change, will be frightening and exciting. A character will usually have some reservations.

3) Hero accepts the challenge. Luke’s aunt and uncle are killed, freeing him from his oath. If your character doesn’t accept the challenge, there is no story&ndashunless the story is about the consequences of not accepting responsibility.

4) The Road of trials. Traveling to the desert town and cantina, getting on Han Solo’s spaceship, traveling to other planets, etc. This is the section where locations and sequence interact. The character travels, learns, commits actions that force inter-action with the environment, and the environment responds positively or negatively, with greater and greater stakes as the story proceeds.

5) Gaining Allies and Powers. Luke meets Han Solo, and Chewbacca, and Obi-Wan, and Princess Leia. He learns of the Force, and the use of Light Sabers, and how to fly and fight and rescue princesses. If your character doesn’t have to grow in order to resolve the problem, you may have chosen the wrong problem or character!

6) Initial Confrontation with Evil, and defeat. Obi-Wan’s death. Or possibly the disastrous attack on the Death Star. One is private and emotional, the other spectacular and physical.

7) Dark Night of the Soul. The moment of greatest weakness. Luke begins to believe he cannot win, and everything he loves will die.

8) Leap of Faith. “Trust your Feelings, Luke.” The leap of Faith is always faith in one of three things: faith in self, faith in your companions, or faith in a higher power. In “Star Wars” it is all three! This may be the only time in the history of cinema that this was true, and helps to explain why George Lucas is a billionaire.

9) Confront Evil&ndashvictorious. The Death Star blows up.

10) Student Becomes the Teacher. Luke is presented with medals, which establish him as a role model.

###

The above ten steps are not some cookie-cutter pattern. They are the combined world wisdom about the path of life itself, the process we go through in achieving any worthwhile goal. There will be fear. There will be defeat. We will need to gain new skills and friends and partners. We must be clear on our acceptance of goals and responsibility. We must have faith. And ultimately, if we have struggled, and learned, and sacrificed, and moved through our fear…we learn and grow and succeed. And then we teach others. This is the pattern of life, and any time you organize information and events into a pattern even vaguely reminiscent of this, the human nervous system, worldwide, will recognize it as story.

It is NOT some kind of cure-all for bad story tellers. What these ten steps are is something analogous to the eighty-eight keys of a piano. Understand the emotional and life significance of each step, and then “play them” as your developed instincts dictate. Make your own kind of music. The pattern has worked for about thirty thousand years. It will work for you, too.

The Lazy Man’s Guide To Great Characterization

Posted by Buy essay Blog | Uncategorized | Posted on June 20th, 2009

One subject arising whenever writers gather to discuss their craft is the mining of life itself for story material. While a vital and important technique, it is important to remember that real human beings are impossibly complex, far too complicated to serve as story characters without major modification. The most complex character in all of western fiction (arguably), Hamlet, is still only 1% as complex as a real human being.

One must remember that there is a unity between character and plot: they are, in essence, two sides of a single coin. Plot is what a character does in a given situation. A plot must empty a character out, give us everything we need to know about the lead, or the story situation hasn’t been thought through very well.

In life, it is reasonable to take the position that we are what we do. True, this is not ALL that we are, but what we do is closer to this essence than what we “think” we are, or what others define us as. Everyone knows that we judge each other on our actions, and it is childish to pretend otherwise.

We learn to characterize by formulating a theory of human nature, and then testing it against the people around us–our family and friends. You should be prepared to defend this theory in conversation and literary debate. After all, there are only two basic questions being addressed in all of fiction:

1) What is it to be human?

2) What is the ethical structure of the universe?

Whatever your own theory is, you should understand it from every direction, and be able to apply it to understand your own strengths and weaknesses.

Look at the three major areas of human life: body, mind, and spirit. What does your body say about you? Believe me, it says worlds about your values, discipline, emotional health, habit patterns and more. What does your career say about you? Are you operating at full efficiency there? Do you complain about money troubles, but not do anything about it? Do you dream, but not perform? Or are you working at a job that you would continue to do even if you won the lottery? To me, this is a major sign of an active, healthy intellect–the ability to do for a living that which you would do for free.

What about your relationship with your husband/wife/significant other? To me, this is where you reveal yourself most clearly. You ARE your partner, flipped upside-down and inside out. If you like what you see across the breakfast table from you, great. If not, you have work to do. Remember: whoever you see over there was the best you could do. If you could have gotten someone smarter, handsomer/prettier, emotionally healthier–you would have. So take a hard look. Often, you can learn more from a person’s partner than you can from meeting the person.

Viewed in this way, there is a lifetime of study in understanding the people around us, and in understanding ourselves as well. And a lifetime of potential stories in examining how people’s flaws and gaps keep them from achieving their full potential. It can be painful to look at this stuff, but the only thing even more painful is being terminally untrue to your own spirit. That, my friends, is a true tragedy. Better the pain of awareness than the agony of self-betrayal. By a long shot.

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